What started as a personal journey of a doctor turned patient morphed into a way to share what’s universal in dealing with cancer, in my case a nasty leukemia (CLL), a failed transplant and a successful clinical trial. The telling of my journey has become a journey to teach about CLL, related blood issues and all cancers. Please visit our new website http://cllsociety.org for the latest news and information. Smart patients get smart care™. If you want to reach me, email bkoffmanMD@gmail.com

Thursday, May 9, 2013

ASH 2012: Dr. Adrian Wiestner: Final Thoughts

The thoughtful Dr. Wiestner of the NIH has some provocative things to say in this brief 2 minute wrap up of our interview.

He says that there may be a significant role for chemotherapy in the future for some carefully selected CLL patients.

He reminds us that these new drugs should force us to re-examine our bedrock views about cancer cocktails. They should force us to revisit all our traditional approaches.

That is a hard thing to do, but a good thing. Doctors are by nature conservative and slow to change.

But there is a sea change coming and Dr. Wiestner suggests that this is a time to really consider what old baggage can be tossed and what we might need on this voyage.

I still have a few surprises from ASH 2012, before I start posting from ASCO 2013 later this month.

I am happy to share that my good friend and fellow CLL survivor and patient advocate, Andrew Schorr of Patient Power and I will be combining forces to offer up several interviews on CLL and other blood and solid cancer from ASCO in Chicago.

I am looking forward to working with Andrew and his professional and pro-patient team.

I have so much I want to share here: more on non-chemo approaches, important discussions on the place of cross-overs in clinical trials, new data from the AACR meeting, what we can learn from the death and autopsy of those who didn't make it, new trials starting up and old trials closing down.

So much to share.

On a personal note, May 7th marked my one year anniversary of my taking ibrutinib. I still remember my disbelief that my nodes seemed to be shrinking in those first few days, but they were. And still are. a year later, albeit, in a less dramatic fashion.

So much has happened in this last year. My mission here and elsewhere is push that we patients can get the best possible care, and that involves more research, great doctors, and wise and brave patients.

We have all those and we sure have moved the bar forward in the last year!

2 Comments:

Responses are less interesting to me than the survival data for may reason, including how ibrutinib works. Rest assured almost everyone was at least a significant nodal response.Progression free survival about 2 years out for ibrutinib is in the mid 90% in treatment naive patients, lower in the relapsed refractory group. I will be sharing a recent paper by Dr. Wiestner on that subject soon, with his number.

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About Me

BkoffmanMD@gmail.com
A family doc and husband of 1 and father of 4 and grandfather of 3 who loves his family and his work. I live with no TV and no microwave, but wouldn't last a minute without friends, art, music, books and the beach. Hockey, good jokes and exotic travel are pretty important too. Writing, Talmud and Zen give meaning to my life. My diet is organic vegan, often raw. I hope the blog makes the load lighter and the path both safer and more fun for those who read it or are going to similar places. I want to help. I crave your comments. If you are new to the blog, check out the portrait my son Will painted (it is the first post), and my very first text post.